EIGHT PEOPLE were running through a dusty landscape.
They moved in twilight between cliffs in a rocky desert
valley, in the first hour of the twelve hours of the ancient Egyptian
underworld night.
But they weren’t in Egypt.
They were totally immersed inside a new virtual reality simulator
called ‘Virtual Eternity’, built by mysterious tech organization, The Sirius
Research Corporation.
Each person, invited under the strictest secrecy, bore a tag
– Sage, Robber, Scribe, Prophetess, Gamer, Soldier, Priest, and Neophyte.
Sage ran at the head of the party. She’d been assigned the
title ‘Sage’ or ‘wise one’ as an associate professor of Egyptology specializing
in mythology and funerary beliefs, despite her youth.
One of the runners out put on a spurt and caught up with Sage.
It was Gamer, a compact young Korean-born game designer.
“This place is unreal, huh?” he said.
“It’s real enough for me.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. It’s so real… it is unreal.
I always wanted to design an ancient Egyptian VR game, but this, hey, I can’t
fathom it out. One hundred percent immersive. Three sixty-degree landscape.
Perfect resolution. No lag. All sensory input and inner-ear thing of real
movement. Forces on body, real muscle sense. Even sweat and fatigue.” He gave the
Egyptologist a quizzical look. “You have the inside story? What is this place
all about? Is this a role-playing game, or just an ancient Egyptian
environment? What are we supposed to do here?”
“Just experience it and survive,” Sage said. A tall woman,
Sage wore a dark blue T-shirt and light khaki trousers and archaeology boots
and she cut a lithe figure, running nimbly and easily. “You heard the
announcement like a god’s voice cracking over our heads at the start. We’ve got
twelve hours to reach the end of the underworld before dawn, surviving the
dangerous guardians, gateways and demons of the journey along the way, or we
die. Virtually die, one hopes.”
“That is the beauty of game worlds,” Gamer said. “Nobody
dies. You just keep coming back for more. Over and over again. You learn from your
experience.”
“That’s reassuring. But in this dead and dry landscape, dying
seems as real as living.”
She turned to glance over her shoulder to check on the
others.
The dusk threw a mottled cast over their faces as if they had
already turned into shades, the
ancient Egyptians term for migrating souls...
